Advent Time

It is the rush of the Christmas Season, Christmas cards are in the mail, or still in the boxes waiting for the quick note and signature. Presents are piling up in closets and under trees, but the main reason of the season was born on this earth two thousand years ago...

Birth Of Jesus the Christ

Jesus, were you born a bruising eight pound boy?
Did you come kicking and crying with your expulsion
from the secure, warm hospitable nest
snug beneath Mary’s heart?
Did you protest the eviction of God’s love
into a cold, human world?
Did the midwife leave the imprint
of her fingers red on your tender skull
as she pulled You into a not-quite-willing
first breath under a frost clear sky?

Christ, were you born with a gentle push,
sliding seamlessly from the prison of darkness
and physical constraint into a flight
of light and movement
stretching limbs like a butterfly
stretches wet wings,
crying wonder, crying joy, crying delight
to the resonance of angel’s songs
echoed from the heart of heaven
into a welcome earthly home?
A woman’s wet tears your first baptism
into humanity, the reality of corporeal life?
The touch of love’s rough hands swaddling
your naked form in coarse cloth, laying you
aside by your mother in a cattle manger
where often we lay you now—safe from the
center of our hearts?

c.Darlene Moore Berg